Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2019]

same old story, it seems. Lived the X360 from day one, and over the years after the original Gears of War -amazing game- I was always noticing that ALL UE games on the X360 looked alike artistically wise, and performance was never over 30 fps. Too bad I can't recover those posts complaining about UE but they are in the forum.

Before that, I was so hyped about Unreal Tournament: The Liandri Conflict, on the original Xbox, that I got it day one. I thought that game would run at a perfect 60 fps on the Xbox, but didn't. Again, there were other games on the platform with better graphics already running at 60 fps but they didn't hyped me as much.

It got to a point in the X360 era that any game with a UE engine tag, wasn't on my buying list -save Gears-, but the engine was so used..... Imho, a good example of what the X360 could truly do and a performant engine was Dante's Inferno by comparison. Nothing like that under UE, sadly

 

I believe Devil May Cry 4 was a more impressive game

 

Maybe they all saw 8-12Tflops@ 4k on secret roadmaps for many years ahead and thinked, " well at least at epic/unity we will make some cool demos ".

More seriously , fair observation, Things must not look too good inside ea for techheads recently , besides already mentioned Stefan Boberg is at epic too. Johan andersonn aka Repi , Magnus Nordin along ea executive and former dice ceo Patrick Soderlund also jumped the ship to form new studio. Wonder if forcing frosbite across company and Gaas cult finally eat its tail and created some crative dissaray.

 

Luckily UE4 doesn't seem to suffer with that problem. Played through Ace Combat 7 over the weekend, and it's hard to believe it's Unreal 4. But alot of it comes down to assets, and stylistically AC7 nails the look of the previous games, esp. the PS2 era titles. It's got some HARD slow downs though. It's a good thing they didn't target 30 FPS. Ironically, Ace Combat 4 is really the only Project Aces era game to actually stick to 60 FPS. AC5 and Zero had sub-60 slow downs, and AC6 targeted 30.

 

I agree on this point, but i'm not certain it was an engine limitation.

Otherwise, i think the UE3 was a pretty good engine, especially on 360.

 

Oh wow, Repi is no longer with DICE? Never thought I would see that happen.

Regards,
SB

 

Yeah started new studio in stockholm with few other dice veterans https://www.embark-studios.com/

 

Unreal Engine games don't look a certain way. It can accomodate pretty much any art style you can think of. I'm not aware of anything limitations to the asset pipeline or the renderer that would force you to make a game look a certain way.

 

Could the metalness workflow favour certain types of material types or material tendencies?

 

If they use the default shading model and post processing effects they can indeed en up looking quite similar, specially if they go for a realistic visual design.

 

The complete lack of baked lighting was a mistake. PBR assets are too good for such basic lighting (just direct analytical).

 

That might be a fair point, but I think it largely comes down to art direction. Like, if you go for the same art style, and use the default material and shading models, you'll get similar results. But even if you're an indie, and not a programmer, there is a great deal of flexibility to make vastly different looks.

 

Not look a certain way, but under the hood, it could be optimised in ways that don't favour some games. eg. If the in-house game was a corridor shooter with superduper graphics, the way scenery is handled could choke on a large, fast racer, say. Or perhaps a large RTS gets crippled by the way objects are handled based on engine design considerations that favour the 2.5D adventurer being made in house.

 

The fighting games were 60 fps at least.

https://www.slideserve.com/Olivia/h...side-the-tech-of-mortal-kombat-vs-dc-universe

According to this though, seems like it wasn't really designed to scale to 60 fps easily. At least not on that console generation.

 

Downloaded the deluxe PC version last night. Probably start playing some of the game tonight...

 

I got the Pro version after watching the analysis, I think whatever AA used in 1X that's causing the blurring is not worth the extra reflection res and cleaness. A sharper image is definitely a priority to me. The game has very HDR too, I didn't get any issues on my Z9D fortunately.

 

Article to go with the videos -- https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...nt-evil-2-remake-multi-platform-tech-analysis

Resident Evil 2 remake plays best on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X
A big divide between the base and enhanced consoles.

Among the best remakes in recent memory, Resident Evil 2 is a true survival horror classic, rebuilt on Capcom's cutting edge RE Engine. Compared to the PlayStation and N64 originals there's a satisfying technical upheaval to show for that 20 year gap. You get real-time cutscenes, volumetric lighting and the freeing of its camera to allow third person shooter controls. Better still? The team targets 60 frames per second, but sadly it only comes to full fruition on certain platforms. Indeed, comparing PlayStation 4 and Xbox One today, it's clear 60fps is better held on Pro and X models - while the base machines, especially Xbox One S, show signs of being left behind.

It's worth touching on the visual points first. We saw it in the game's '1-shot' 30 minute demo, but with final code in hand it's confirmed. Base PS4 and Xbox One each push for a 1920x1080 resolution, but in practise there's more going on under the hood, notably on Microsoft's console. Image quality is blurrier, despite resolving to the same 1080p pixel count - much like Resident Evil 7. One theory as to why: it's using a form of temporal reconstruction, where camera changes during cutscenes show Xbox One has a rougher rendering of fine elements like hair. It only lasts for a few frames, and these details fill in eventually, but it's clear there is a deeper compromise next to a base PS4, which runs natively.

So it goes for the enhanced machines too. The target resolution on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X is 2880x1620 (a 25 per cent cut on each axis from 4K) but this time there's more evidence of reconstruction on Sony's premium console. On top of that, each appears to use differing anti-aliasing methods as well. PS4 Pro offers up a sharper image that lets you see slightly more detail at range, but with the drawback of more pixel crawl and flicker on specular highlights. If you've seen our Resident Evil 7 coverage, this should ring a bell. As for X owners? Once again you get the more pristine, less noisy presentation; fewer jaggies, but at the cost of more blur overall.

...

Xbox One X, PlayStation Pro, PlayStation 4, Xbox One S
Average FPS 59.3, 58.3, 47.6, 40.7
Lowest FPS 49.0, 44.0, 30.0, 28.0
Dropped Frames 1.24%, 2.81%, 20.64%, 32.20%

Overall, it's clear that Xbox One X takes point, with PS4 Pro next down on the performance ladder. Expect more frequent drops to 55fps and under on Sony's enhanced model, but it's still a convincing 60Hz experience a majority of the time. It's not far off the standard set by Microsoft's more powerful hardware, though it is the first of the two consoles to start hitching under stress. Our feeling is that the RE engine was built with performance in mind and 60fps gaming in particular, but the numbers demonstrate that only the enhanced consoles are capable of delivering this consistently

 

It is said 1X shows less reconstruction artifacts than the Pro but is it still using the reconstruction technique tho? My understanding is the FXAA helps to minimize the artifacts but blurring it at the same time, so both aren't native res in the end right?

 

It's a bit of a quagmire with the techniques they used on 4Pro/OneX consoles. I'm curious what their rendering bottlenecks are to have to resort to partial resolution and reconstruction techniques all while using different AA techniques too.